Affect Path to Flood Protective Coping Behaviors using SEM based on A Survey in Shenzhen, China.

Jing Huang,Zhiqiang Wang,Weiwei Cao,Huimin Wang

doi:10.3390/ijerph17030940

Abstract

The initial concept of flood control has gradually shifted to flood risk management which emphasizes more public participation. Therefore, understanding the public’s protective coping behavioral patterns to floods is significant, and can help improve the effectiveness of public participation and implementation of flood-mitigation measures. However, the quantitative effect of socio-demographic factors on flood risk perception and behaviors is not clear. In this study, the socio-demographic factors are included to explore the quantitative relationship with and the affect path to flood protective coping behaviors with socio-demographic factors are studied. Shenzhen City in China is chosen as the study area, which suffers frequent urban floods every year. Questionnaire surveys are conducted in five flood-prone communities there, and 339 valid questionnaires were collected. The correlations between flood risk perception, flood risk knowledge, flood risk attitude, socio-demographic factors, and protective coping behaviors are analyzed firstly. A structural equation model (SEM) about these factors is then established to verify the correctness of hypothetical paths and discover new paths. The results indicates that socio-demographic factors and flood risk perception do not have impacts on protective coping behaviors directly, but are mediated by flood risk knowledge and flood risk attitude. Flood risk attitude is an important factor that affects protective coping behaviors directly. Moreover, two affect paths to flood protective coping behaviors are proposed. The findings of Shenzhen city in this study can be extended to other cities with similar characteristics, providing support for conducting effective flood mitigation measures.

Highlights

With the change of global climate, the frequency and intensity of urban floods have increased significantly [1], which will affect the normal operation of cities seriously and threaten the public safety and economic development of cities simultaneously [2]
The results show that there are correlations between flood risk perception, socio-demographic factors, risk knowledge risk attitudes and protective coping behaviors, but the degrees of correlation vary
Grahn and Jaldell [37] have proved the link between flood risk perception have proved the link between flood risk perception and flood risk knowledge, and we discover and flood risk knowledge, and we discover that flood risk knowledge is closely related to protective that flood risk knowledge is closely related to protective coping behaviors

Summary

Introduction

With the change of global climate, the frequency and intensity of urban floods have increased significantly [1], which will affect the normal operation of cities seriously and threaten the public safety and economic development of cities simultaneously [2]. The scale of evacuation due to floods has shown a rapid increase worldwide. In China, the problem of urban flooding is more prominent. China suffered severe floods, and more than 100,000 people were relocated, and a total of. In order to reduce the impact of floods on the public, the shift to risk-based flood management approaches is happening worldwide, so a deep understanding of flood mitigation behavior is considered important [3]. Group-based coping behaviors have proved to be capable of significantly reducing flood-related damage [4].

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion